The Hidden #MeToo Epidemic: Sexual Assault Against Bisexual Women

The #MeToo movement is invaluable to sexual assault and rape survivors. It’s created an unparalleled site of solidarity and potential for dialogue.

Part of that dialogue means noting the gaps. The silences #MeToo leaves behind are as important as the voices it encourages.

For me, this meant remembering, “What? How can a woman rape you?” and “Oh. I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” as the primary reactions to my sexual assault narrative.

#MeToo and its discursive aftermath have also exposed our societal assumptions about rape and other forms of sexual violence — assumptions that aren’t all true. Often, I see rape and sexual violence, including harassment, framed by media outlets as a cishet male/cishet female problem: A heterosexual man harasses, rapes, or sexually assaults a heterosexual woman.

While this framework overlooks many realities about sexual assault, the one I’m focusing on here surprised me, in part precisely because I’m part of the demographic in question.

46 percent of bisexual women have been raped, compared to 13 percent of lesbians and 17 percent of heterosexual women. This means that the rate of forcible rape experienced by bisexual women is about 2.6 times higher than that of straight women and 3.5 times higher than that of lesbian women.

22 percent of bisexual women have been raped by a romantic partner, in comparison to 9 percent of heterosexual women.

#1: Hypersexualization and Objectification

There is little question that biphobic stereotypes contribute to our victimization. Bisexual women are often seen as hypersexual, as sexual objects, or as readily available for others’ sexual pleasure (i.e., the threesomes initiated by cis heterosexual couples looking to “spice things up”) before their own. These stereotypes are dehumanizing and reduce bisexual women to pornographic fantasies, in addition to potentially exacerbating our vulnerability to sexual predation.

#2: Substance Abuse, Trauma, and Mental Illness

Trauma begets trauma, and this increased incidence of childhood sexual assault is partly to blame for bisexual women’s higher rates of mental illness. 45.4% of bisexual women have considered or attempted suicide, in comparison to 29.5% of lesbian women and 9.6% of straight women.

#3: Stigmatization and Lack of Social Support

In addition to initial incidences of sexual assault, bisexual women are likelier than gay or straight women to experience revictimization afterward. Revictimization includes anything that exacerbates or perpetuates the trauma of sexual assault (or any trauma), including victim-blaming, a lack of accessible community and/or professional resources, and further sexual assault after the initial incident(s).

Bisexual women are disproportionately vulnerable to all of these forms of revictimization. Because of their (false) reputation as hypersexual, bisexual women are often painted as attention-seeking or as “deserving” of sexual assault or harassment, and are thus blamed for their trauma.

Because of their exclusion from both “straight” and LGBT communities, bisexual women often don’t report their experiences of sexual assault, fearing judgment, shaming, or misunderstanding from mental health professionals, law enforcement, and community members. Like other members of the LGBT community, many bisexual women are ostracized from their families, but they’re also often left out of “mainstream” gay communities as well.

This means that the majority of bisexual individuals are dealing with multiple forms of marginalization, all of which increase one’s vulnerability to sexual assault and to subsequent revictimization.

It’s strange to belong to a vulnerable part of the community, and to know that in effect, you’re a statistic. But movements like #MeToo can catalyze dialogues about the underexplored areas of sexual violence and rape — as long as we’re willing to look at the facts.